Tern in flight

This image is a landmark for me. Before now, I've used big glass on a Wimberley rig to capture big birds which fly in straight lines, but I've never captured a bird like a tern - fairly small, fast, sudden and erratic turns, etc.
I got this fellow on Stone Harber Point (NJ) yesterday using my 200-400VR cranked back to 200 with a TC-1.7 mounted on my D2x. I pulled back to 200 to increase my chances of getting and keeping the bird in my viewfinder. I'm guessing this is a Common Tern; confirmation of ID requested.

I got a bunch of good images on this trip which I'll post over the next few days as I process them.

Great capture. Haven't shot terns in flight I know how hard it is to catch those suckers. Outstanding.

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Thanks Harry. Even though I pulled of this and a few other flight shots yesterday, I think I'm going to hand-held for flight in the future. You would have laughed your head off watching me trying to avoid tripping over tripod legs.

It is a nice image Gordon. I do notice some noise in the sky and was wondering what ISO you used.

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Hi Gordon -
I shot at 400 and did a quick pass with NeatImage in auto mode. You should have seen the noise before that! I usually don't notice much noise at 400, but then I usually don't take pictures of large areas of uniform color and no texture. I don't hesitate to use 400 with the D2x but I know that sometimes I'll see noise.
Gordon

Gordon, very nice shot. You are getting there my friend. You should be proud. :wink:

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Thanks Frank. I'm glad I'm getting the hang of shots like this with big glass on a Wimberley, I'm also going to start using my 300/4 hand-held on my backup D2h. Or would you like to loan me your 300/2.8???

Terns are so difficult to photograph, let alone in flight I saw quite a few while in MN a few weeks back and I all but gave up. I know what you mean about getting them in the viewfinder as they sure present quite the challenge.

The shot is pretty noisy for an ISO 400 shot from the X.
I routinely shoot flight shots at 400-640 on mine and don't see noise such as what you're experiencing.

Was this a really intense crop of a larger image or did you have to apply lots of sharpening?

At ISO 400, unless you really underexpose a shot, you shouldn't see noise like this. Even if you used a fair bit of -EV to hold the white in the birds chest, I don't understand the noise in the light colored body and wings of the bird itself?

Terns are so difficult to photograph, let alone in flight I saw quite a few while in MN a few weeks back and I all but gave up. I know what you mean about getting them in the viewfinder as they sure present quite the challenge.

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But it sure is fun to try! :smile: :smile: As I've been told by many folks, all it takes is practice, practice and more practice. At the rate of progress I'm making check back for better images in, say, another six months??? :wink:

The shot is pretty noisy for an ISO 400 shot from the X.
I routinely shoot flight shots at 400-640 on mine and don't see noise such as what you're experiencing.

Was this a really intense crop of a larger image or did you have to apply lots of sharpening?

At ISO 400, unless you really underexpose a shot, you shouldn't see noise like this. Even if you used a fair bit of -EV to hold the white in the birds chest, I don't understand the noise in the light colored body and wings of the bird itself?

Jim

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Hi Jim -

I agree - this image is noisier than I would like or expect from a D2x. I've taken lots of shots at ISO 400 and gotten much better results. I think you have identified the two contibuting factors. This is a very large crop - the crop contains only 2.3MP, 19% of the D2x sensor. If I had racked the 200-400 out to 400, I could have used a much smaller crop. But I wouldn't have captured the image!

Also I underexposed by a full stop. I did run the image through Neat Image, but used the auto mode, and I suspect more sophisticated use of NI or some other noise reducer would help. Out of curiosity, do you have a preference for a noise reduction tool?

I did all sharpening in Capture using settings of 75,5,5 which has always given me pretty good results. I don't think that was part of the problem

Gordon, thats a good tern shot. I truly know how difficult terns can be. I spent close to 6 hours earlier this summer standing in ankle deep water in a wetland trying to capture a decent shot of a black tern. I think I took over 200 shots and I didn't get a really decent shot out of the lot. They move so fast - especially when they have a nest nearby.

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